


Something borrowed, something blue

by maharetr



Series: Imagine Bucky - maharetr post [8]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Borrowers Fusion, Gen, Pre-Canon, Pre-Captain America: The First Avenger, References to The Borrowers, pre-war Bucky is a softie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-15
Updated: 2017-01-15
Packaged: 2018-09-17 16:07:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9332735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maharetr/pseuds/maharetr
Summary: “You know,” Bucky says, watching her eat. “If you told your da about me, I could leave parcels for all of you.”“You know,” she counters, her mouth full. “If you told Steve about me, you wouldn’t have to fret so much.”





	

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [Imagine Bucky tumblr](http://imaginebucky.tumblr.com/) anon prompt: "imagine bucky finding a borrower/tiny person in his and steve's house and trying to keep them a secret". Originally posted [here](http://imaginebucky.tumblr.com/post/142707704580/imagine-bucky-finding-a-borrowertiny-person-in) 12 April 2016.

“I think we’ve got rats,” Steve says. He’s mostly hidden behind the grocery bags he’s carrying in, so he doesn’t see Bucky flinch. Hopefully.

“Yeah?’ Bucky asks, aiming for casual.

Steve maneuvers in the narrow space of their apartment and hefts his armload onto the table. “I heard something in the kitchen last night,” he says, digging around in the paper bags. “I couldn’t see anything, but I got us…” He holds up the sachets of rat bait. “Figured it can’t hurt.”

“Sure thing,” Bucky says.

Later, he waits until Steve has gone to bed, and then he goes around and gathers up every single one.

~*~

He lies awake in bed, listening intently. Elsie’s quiet, but he knows what to listen for: the scrape of the floorboard, the tiniest shuffling along the skirting board, and then the faint rasping of her climbing up the string he’d tied to the metal railing of his headboard. He rolls onto his side, and reaches out a finger to help her up the last heave onto the mattress. They grin at each other for a moment, and he produces a tiny serving of last night’s roast, unwrapping it carefully. She sits on his handkerchief — a picnic-sized blanket to her — and tucks in with obvious relish.

“You know,” he says, watching her eat. “If you told your da about me, I could leave parcels for all of you.”

“You know,” she counters, her mouth full. “If you told Steve about me, you wouldn’t have to fret so much.”

“I don’t _fret_ ,” he says.

She cocks an eyebrow at him. “We know not to eat rat poison, you dolt; it smells terrible.”

“Point,” he concedes. He’s still glad he did it, though.

She starts in on a pea, eating it like an apple.

“Steve’ll think I’m nuts,” he says. “Or think he’s gone nuts.” Bucky doesn’t tell her he sometimes he wonders if he himself has in fact gone off the deep end; if she’s a hallucination, well, there’re probably much worse ones.

“Are you all warm enough?” he asks. “It’s getting cool for me in the mornings, so…”

She nods at him over a chunk of roast potato. “It’s fine. We’ll make the big move into the kitchen soon, to be near the hot pipes.”

“Moving east for the winter?” He smiles. She tilts her head inquiringly, still chewing.

“Like birds,” he clarifies. “Flying south in the winter to get away from the snow.”

“Birds are terrible,” she says absently, licking gravy off her fingers. “Cats are worse, though.”

She finishes her last mouthful and he rests his hand out. She clambers on, settling in his palm, her weight slight but comforting.

“What’s ‘report for duty’?” she asks.

Bucky hasn’t moved, but he feels himself freeze anyway. “Where’d you see that?”

“On a letter with your name on it,” she says, pointedly. “Stuffed down the back of a drawer.”

He squeezes his eyes closed. “That’ll teach me for helping you learn to read, won’t it?”

“What’s it mean?”

He forces himself to open his eyes, to meet her gaze. “Means I’m going to have to go away for a while. A lot of seasons, depending on what the damn birds and cats on the other side of the world are doing.”

She flinches, but squares her shoulders, folding her arms and glaring. “Were you gonna tell me?”

“I haven’t told _Steve_ yet. God.”

She pokes his fingertip. “So, now you got two things to tell him, then.”

The laugh startles out of him. “Christ.” Then something shivers up, and his eyes sting. “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.”

They look at each other, both of them wobbly.

She takes a deep breath. “I’ll get you some thread, then,” she says, decisively.

“Thread?”

“If you’re going on a big move. To bundle things up with.” Her chin is high, daring him to scoff.

“Thank you,” he murmurs, sincerely. “Thank you.” He makes a mental note to borrow an entire damn bobbin from their sewing kit and lose it behind the dresser.

~*~

He keeps it with him, the slender twist of bright blue, all through training and into his first deployment. He loses it somewhere in one long night’s march in the mud and rain, and the grief is a wave of overwhelming regret, until a letter arrives from Brooklyn.

There are pages and pages of Steve’s neat copperplate about the neighborhood, school, the apartment. Then on the last sheet in pencil in jagged, careful printing: _Stay away from cats_ , and below that, Steve’s copperplate: _I’m teaching her to write_.


End file.
